No response: Is it already the end of social media recruiting? (Part 1)

Recently, at the #HRUBratislava in a panel of around 15 HR-Managers, technology-recruiters and entrepreneurs, there was an almost sobering discussion about the use and future of Social Media Recruiting (SMR). What one hears there? "Everyday, we push all our 8323 jobs to Facebook – no response" – "Our 25 researchers contact over 500 software developers everyday on LinkedIn – no response" – "We even send the people friend requests on Facebook – no response". At the end of the discussion, one of the HR-Managers says to himself: "… when I hear my colleagues speak in this manner, I can save myself from jumping into this hype."

Is Social Media Recruiting at the end, before we even learned to derive the proper benefit from it?

Social Media Recruiting has great potential, it even has such a great potential that Managers are simply overwhelmed because in spite of the many possibilities know only few platforms or/and do not use these in the best possible way. Social Media Recruiting is suitable for passive as well as active search for candidates from the recruiter-perspective. It can passively support "post and pray“- strategies, in which new channels are opened and this improves a range of existing job advertisements. This sea of data has great potential particularly in Active Sourcing.

Active Sourcing requires target audience research

In marketing naturally, in the HR-sector often still unknown territory. Each open position demands intensive analysis with the candidate target audience. It is equally important to consider for which purpose a social media platform is used by the candidate (private vs. subject relevant vs. professional platforms. Our target audience uses different social media platforms, which are available for different recruiting use-cases (to identify – examine – contact). Depending on the purpose and target audience, some platforms are more suitable than others. Contrary to many opinions of participants of the conference, we recommend "quality over quantity" approach. Each individual research of a candidate is time intensive. Less is more.

Attention spam-danger!

Damage to image for recruiters and companies are not rare with bulk-messages. Do not spam your candidates with (unsuitable) positions in Xing and LinkedIn. Do not fill your timeline with job links but with relevant content instead. And refrain from disturbing your candidates in the private space with text messages on Facebook. Less is more! Five top researched profiles is better than 50 badly researched profiles. Five direct contacts are better than to send 200 standard messages into the blue. You will learn how this works in practice in the next blog "A social recruiting guideline for tech-recruiters".